Journal of Research in Childhood Education

ISSN: 0256-8543 (Print) 2150-2641 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/ujrc20

Global Citizenship Education: Emancipatory Practice in

a New York Preschool

Robin Elizabeth Hancock

To cite this article: Robin Elizabeth Hancock (2017) Global Citizenship Education: Emancipatory
Practice in a New York Preschool, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 31:4, 571-580,
DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2017.1346731

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2017.1346731

Published online: 15 Sep 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 656

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujrc20
JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
2017, VOL. 31, NO. 4, 571–580
https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2017.1346731

Global Citizenship Education: Emancipatory Practice in a New York

Preschool
Robin Elizabeth Hancock
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

By the time many preschool-age African American children enter preschool, Received 8 May 2016
they have already been exposed to indicators that inform them of their Accepted 29 November 2016
“place” and their “worth” in the communities they frequent. There is a gap KEYWORDS
in the literature on the value of global education for African American Case study; children;
children. This research is a study of a global citizenship curriculum imple- classrooms; critical theory;
mented in a small, community preschool serving a predominantly African cross-cultural; curriculum
American population in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, development; diversity; early
New York. The questions used to guide this study are (1) What does global childhood education
citizenship education curriculum look like at Sunshine preschool? (2) How do
children at this preschool negotiate their identities as global citizens within
this particular curriculum? The research was conducted as a case study, with
the researcher serving as a participant observer in the classroom. The study
identified four primary themes within the curriculum: lessons in power,
membership in a global community, self-esteem development, and teacher
intentionality. Most centrally, this study articulates the ways that the enact-
ment of global citizenship curriculum can contribute to countering negative
conceptions of self in very young African American children.

Historically, in the United States, marginalized groups such as African Americans have endured
legacies of formal and informal education that have failed to teach appreciation for their culture and
inclusion in the wider global community (Banks, 2004). This marginalization has been achieved
through social events, institutions, and policies that have historically informed African Americans
that they are meant to occupy a particular physical, social, and even emotional place on pain of
disenfranchisement, harassment, and death.
This research introduces global citizenship education as an option for countering the limitations
placed on many African American children in their earliest classroom settings. Specifically, this
study explores how this type of curriculum influences the understanding of the children in a
particular preschool about the value of their community and awareness of their potential contribu-
tion to and membership in a global community. The topic of my research is the enactment of a
global citizenship curriculum as a form of emancipatory practice at a small community preschool in
the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York, that serves African American
families.
Two research questions guided this study. The first question seeks to find out what an effective
global education curriculum looks like in a preschool setting:

Research Question 1: What does global citizenship education look like at Sunshine Preschool?

The second research question speaks to the development of a global identity and its potential to
decolonize messages of “place” that African American children often receive:

CONTACT Robin Elizabeth Hancock [email protected] 930 Grand Concourse, Apartment 9D, Bronx, NY 10451.
© 2017 Association for Childhood Education International
572 R. E. HANCOCK

Research Question 2: How do children at this preschool negotiate their identities as global citizens
within this particular curriculum? More specifically, how do these children make sense of their
“place” in the global community within this curriculum?

Global citizens are empowered by a lack of physical and virtual boundaries to have access to the
world and negotiate that world effectively. While negotiating these new spaces, a holistic attempt at
creating and maintaining relationships across boundaries of differences while also actively valuing
personal identities is the goal. All of this can be done while operating from the perspective that,
though occupying individual identities, all are members of the same global community.

Multicultural education versus global citizenship education

At this point, it may be important to note the difference between multicultural education and global
citizenship education. In many U.S. curricula that are intentionally multicultural, a strong focus is on
education that looks outward at other cultures without active self-reflection on one’s relationship to
neighbors, local and global. Global citizenship education, on the other hand, seeks to find common-
alities and value across our boundaries of difference. The focus becomes one’s connection to others,
with the ultimate goal of developing an understanding that each of us is a complex, fully realized,
and highly valuable individual.
At its best, multicultural education seeks to reflect the lived experiences of a highly diverse world
by actively incorporating new perspectives into classroom curriculum. The National Association for
Multicultural Education states that an education firmly rooted in multiculturalism:
advocates the belief that students and their life histories and experiences should be placed at the center of the
teaching and learning process and that pedagogy should occur in a context that is familiar to students and that
addresses multiple ways of thinking. (National Association for Multicultural Education, 2017)

This definition seeks to disrupt homogeneous, often Euro-centric, curricula by incorporating funds
of knowledge that belong to people from a wide range of cultural and geographical experience.
Global citizenship education takes the work of multicultural education one step further. Like
multiculturalism, global citizenship actively works to build an environment where multiple perspec-
tives are incorporated into curricula. What makes global citizenship education unique is its inten-
tional use of protocols that allow students to identify the relationships they intrinsically have with
others, regardless of age, gender, and race, as well as cultural or geographic distance.

Theoretical framework
In this study, a framework rooted in anticolonial theory is what differentiates global citizenship
education from an education that is purely multicultural. Teaching that is anticolonial relies on
teaching within a context that acknowledges that colonialism exists in the present as an ongoing
phenomenon (Childs & Williams, 1997). It follows that a curriculum that is global in scope and
speaks to the unique history and culture of African American children is emancipatory when it
provides a perspective that challenges the unique type of colonialism present in more traditional
classroom settings and referred to by Ladson-Billings (2009) as the “White supremacist master
script” (p. 18).
Dei and Asgharzadeh (2001) lay out a framework for anticolonial discourse that I use as a guide
for this study. In it, they begin by referencing Fanon (1963), who established that “colonization can
only be understood as a historical process that ultimately culminates in changing the social order”
(p. 298). Dei and Asgharzadeh went on to establish colonialism as something that is not simply
separate and foreign but rather is imposed on the group. “It is therefore argued that an anticolonial
approach recognizes the importance of locally produced knowledge emanating from cultural history,
daily human experience, and social interactions and sees marginalized groups as subjects of their
 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CHILDHOOD EDUCATION 573

own experience and histories…. Its goal is to question, interrogate, and challenge the foundations of
institutionalized power and privilege” (p. 300).
Global citizenship at Sunshine is an anticolonial practice because it pushes back on the context of
White supremacy that Ladson-Billings (2009) describes and within which young African American
children so often find themselves. She defines critical race theory as an acknowledgment that racism
is “endemic and deeply ingrained in American life” and her theory “challenges claims of neutrality,
colorblindness and objectivity” (p. 24). In so doing, there is the acknowledgment that the poor
conditions under which African American children often experience school and schooling is
immediately related to race and racism. The concept of race here is not simply a theoretical
construct, but rather a lived experience in the day-to-day lives of young African American children
in education settings. According to Ladson-Billings (2009):
Critical race theory sees the official school curriculum as a culturally specific artifact designed to maintain a
White supremacist master script…. This means stories of African Americans are muted and erased when they
challenge dominant culture, authority and power. (p. 18)

Teaching in the form of globalized curriculum pushes back on this by privileging the stories and
experiences of African Americans, Africans, Afro Latinos, Afro Caribbeans, and others from the
diaspora in the classroom to counteract the master script confining African Americans to a
particular limited “place” in society.
Drawing further links between anticolonial theory and critical race theory, Childs and Williams
(1997) quote Aijaz Ahmad as saying that “‘Colonialism’ … becomes a trans-historical thing, always
present and always in process of dissolution in one part of the world or another” (p. 3). Here, the
reader can draw a direct link between colonialism and the practice of teaching African American
children. Teaching from a “White supremacist master script” can be equated with educational
colonialism—an ongoing colonizing of the minds of African American children during which the
child learns that she is welcome only in limited geographic, social, and intellectual spaces. It is
important to highlight here that educational colonialism is a current phenomenon. Teaching is then
anticolonial and emancipatory if it seeks to replace the current master script with one that empowers
African American children.

Sunshine preschool
Sunshine is a four-room preschool housed in a converted warehouse in the predominantly African
American, African, and Afro Caribbean corner of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in
Brooklyn. Felicia Barnor, affectionately called Mama Felicia, has directed Sunshine since its incep-
tion as a small, one-classroom, home-based preschool. Mama Felicia’s motivations began as a deep
frustration in not being able to find early childhood programs for her young daughter that positively
reflected her community and her history:
I wanted her to know that she was a part of something large and wonderful and powerful. In this way, I knew I
would either have to put her in an inadequate school or quit my job, go back to school and create my own.
(Barnor, 2013)

Friends created murals to decorate the walls and the community donated books, baby dolls, and art
supplies. Former colleagues from the Uhuru Sasa (Freedom Now) school in Bedford-Stuyvesant
donated their skills as teachers. The school was born.
In the main space, the classrooms are divided by cubbies, bookcases, and dramatic play structures
instead of walls. Nearly every surface displays colorful posters of historical heroes from every
continent, children’s artwork, and statements of affirmation, such as “We are the Fouriors and we
are POWERFUL.” The cement floor is covered with colorful carpets that help to designate the
various areas of the classrooms. The classrooms themselves are tightly packed with materials, tables,
cubbies, and storage spaces. Two separate smaller rooms at the back of the preschool used for music
574 R. E. HANCOCK

and movement and small-group work, in addition to a small kitchen, the director’s office, and an
administrative office. With no windows save for the toddler classroom and the director’s office, the
majority of the school is lit with artificial light.
The preschool enrolls approximately 85 children between ages 2 and 5 years and employs 10 full-
time teachers, auxiliary staff, and several administrative personnel. The children come from a
mixture of working-class and middle-class families, predominantly living in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The Fouriors classroom (those children who are age 4 years and will graduate to kindergarten in the
Spring) is predominantly African American. At the time of my pilot observation, 16 of the 18
children in the class were African American.
The curriculum at Sunshine is centered on global citizenship immersion:
We know that identity begins to be established from the child’s first moments and gathers momentum until
about age 7…. Because we believe the history of most people of color has been either suppressed, glossed over
or spun in a negative light, … we feel so strongly that it is never too early to help a child establish a strong
personal identity that reflects who he or she is as a person of color in relation to the rest of the world. (Barnor,
2017)

This curriculum translates into a school day that consists of a morning of community and cultural
immersion and an afternoon of more unstructured play. With the director’s input and head teacher’s
permission, the researcher drafted a letter to parents introducing herself as a doctoral student
interested in researching the ways that African American preschoolers learn about their positions
in the world and their value as global citizens. Although the researcher did not intend to conduct
formal interviews with parents, she wanted to make herself open and available for conversations and
believed developing relationships with parents would contribute to a thick body of data and offer
further insight into the communities the children live in and the messages they are receiving.
Audio recordings were supplemented with written notes that were used primarily for recording
relevant material that could not be discerned from audio. In addition, the mission statement of the
school (noted in part above), previous and current curriculum plans, and physical artifacts from the
classroom were used as supplementary data. The goal of using multiple sources was to assist in the
triangulation of data. Holding various sources together made it possible to compare the center’s use
of and success in implementing a global citizenship curriculum from a number of angles.
After coding and creating categories (54 total ranging from “community” and “neighborhood” to
“affection and care” and “family”) based on repeated words, phrases, concepts, and artifacts, the researcher
discovered four themes throughout the data—lessons in power, membership in a global community, self-
esteem development, and teacher intentionality—that served to answer the two research questions.

Theme 1. Lessons in “power”

On an unusually warm morning in late March, Dalya sits at the table working out a puzzle in the
light of the open door. After a couple minutes, she says tearfully, “I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”
Hearing her words, Sonia responds, “Yes, you can. I’ll help you and we’ll do it together.” Sitting close
by is the lead teacher, Mama Amaya, who has been observing the interaction. She speaks to Sonia,
“You’re so helpful Sonia. That’s exactly what you do when someone needs help. You’re very good at
that.” And she says to Dalya, “You can do it. I know that you’re very intelligent and you have friends
all around you that will help you.”
Power was defined in this study as the messages children receive about their ability to be heard,
acknowledged, and responded to in ways that centralize their needs and experiences. During time
spent at Sunshine, tension over the increased deaths of Black children and the subsequent rallying
against it was rapidly increasing around the community, putting the question of who wields power
(and how) even more prominently in the researcher’s mind. Surely, police brutality has been an ever-
present nightmare for African Americans since their arrival (Russell-Brown, 1997). The uniqueness
of this particular moment in American history is that it is receiving more media attention than in
 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CHILDHOOD EDUCATION 575

recent decades. As a result, African American children are more exposed to images of and language
referring to people who look like them facing brutality from authority figures, which goes a long way
toward teaching that their words, their communities, and their very lives are not worthy of life. Thus,
the children begin to understand that they are powerless in the world in which they live.
The collaborative work between teachers and children at Sunshine preschool is anticolonial in that it
counters these very messages. In the brief exchange above, Dalya was taught that she was heard and was
worthy of care while Sonia’s caring gesture was affirmed. Both children learned in that moment a bit of
what it feels like to be members of a loving community. When African American children receive
validation that their lives have value and simultaneously that they are members of a large, welcoming,
and validating worldwide community, they are empowered to adopt a different identity.
Containing 10 coding categories ranging from community to validation and agency, Theme 1
speaks to both research questions. In very concrete ways, lessons in power are some of the many
ways that a global citizenship curriculum is enacted at Sunshine. For example, community is
expressed in an open floor plan at Sunshine. It is evident in the request by a teacher to a student,
“Can you take this back to the Ife’s classroom or the Asantewas classroom?” It is expressed when a
child from the toddler room hears the music from the class across the aisle and waddles over to join
the dancing circle and is given a place of importance in the middle of the circle. Community is
powerful here and teaches children that they are free to move about in a safe space and are
encouraged and welcomed to do so. Validation is evident through the visual placing of family
pictures, the images of famous people of color from around the world, and art that features Black
and Brown people throughout the classroom. It is also done in subtler ways, such as acknowledging
the day-to-day experiences of children in the school. Such agency began when Mama Felicia took
control of her own daughter’s education by starting her own school. It continues most commonly in
the classroom, giving children practice communicating with adults and each other in ways that are
gentle and empowering.
When teachers at Sunshine are working to teach their African American children that they are
part of something vibrant and valuable, an important component is instilling an understanding of
their power to influence opinion and reach their goals:

After plaintively stating that it was his turn to read the schedule for the day, Mama Amaya reassures David that
she knows it is his turn and “will make sure that he has a chance to do his job and won’t forget.” She then
thanks him for reminding her before reinforcing that she knows how important his job is to him and how
much he enjoys taking part in class work. (personal observation, April, 2013)

It is true that lessons in power can be taught by any teacher (in any school) who is sensitive to the
needs of their children. In an environment like Sunshine, these lessons encouraging student voice
contribute to a curriculum that is actively deestablishing a supremacist script that places the child in
a marginalized, silenced position. In a time of increased visibility of police brutality toward Black
people, a firm and early understanding of their own power is crucial to keeping young African
American children confident in their value and the value of their community. In this way, power is
used to develop a healthy sense of who they are in relation to others; when they are taught that their
“place” is as a valued member of the global community, they are more capable of combating
messages that teach otherwise.

Theme 2. Membership in a global community

The second question guiding this study calls into question the ways children understand the spaces
they are meant to move about in and the use of global citizenship curriculums in expanding this
concept of having an assigned place. As it relates to the African American preschooler and the
messages they receive about themselves, “place” has been used here to identify how these messages
tell them how to live, what is safe to say, and what to be in a way that does not disrupt the current
576 R. E. HANCOCK

hierarchy of social and racial power. It is a colonizing message and a form of violence, in that the
child is taught that they can only successfully occupy a handful of identities.
Mama Amaya sits with a small group of children reading them a book about children in West Africa. After
reading a page, she says, “These children kind of remind me of you. How are they like you?” One student says,
“They’re children.” Mama Amaya confirms, “That’s right, they’re children.” Another offers, “They’re Black,”
and Mama Amaya says, “Yes, they are. They’re Black.” A third child says, “They’re cutie-pies.” Mama Amaya
smiles and says, “Yes, they are. They’re cutie-pies, just like you.” (personal observation, April, 2013)

At Sunshine, books are a powerful source of teaching global citizenship. Small-group conversations
are easily facilitated during story time and offer opportunities for teachers to reinforce messages of
connection to the cultures and experiences of others. Through the simple messages of being both
children, cute, Black, and so on, teachers methodically teach their students about their tangible
relationships with others around the globe in a way that is developmentally appropriate. Unique to
traditional multicultural education, this lesson of relationship within a global community is inten-
tionally infused into everyday life in the classroom.
Six categories frame the child’s community as global at Sunshine: family, collaboration, European
heritage, African heritage, curriculum, and affection. These categories, like the lessons in power of
the first theme, work in collaboration to eliminate the concept of an assigned space that children are
meant to occupy according to the images/messages they receive. Through literature, weekly yoga
classes, West African dance, mask making in South American tradition, poetry by South African
poets, violin lessons, and so on, children are free to be compassionate, witty, caring, intelligent, shy,
extroverted, and any other number of characteristics that most suit them through intentional
association with a variety of perspectives and traditions from throughout the diaspora.
Simultaneously, understanding the world as their personal community, they are freed to move
about the world with a sense of ownership. Place becomes something that is chosen and self-
determined, rather than assigned.
Similar to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (2005) that describes various malleable
environments that surround the child and influence her development, concentric circles of commu-
nity are intentionally cultivated at Sunshine for each child, ranging from immediate family to global
community. How these circles support the child has a direct effect on how children come to
understand their role as members of a global community. Unlike Bronfenbrenner’s theory, however,
the way the child is treated within these environments is not dependent on the child’s treatment of
the environment at this early age. Conversely, the communities are framed as support networks to
appreciate, sustain, and strengthen children in the face of negative message they may receive about
themselves and their community. Membership in a global community then becomes a series of
support systems in which preschool-age children can begin to locate their identity and protection
from elements of supremacy they may encounter along the way.

Theme 3. Self-esteem development

When Mama Felicia states that “Our children need to take in that the truth about them is very
positive,” she is challenging a narrative of trans-historic educational colonialism, which states that
African American children, and, by extension, African American culture, is inherently bad. Through
intentional lessons in such things as community, self care, and physical beauty, Mama Felicia and the
teachers at Sunshine are actively “question[ing], interrogat[ing], and challeng[ing] the foundations of
institutionalized power and privilege” (Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001), which is necessary for such
anticolonial work in the classroom. In answer to Research Question 1, children at Sunshine learn
to define themselves positively as they move about in an environment that engages global practice:
One morning each week, when weather allows, the Fouriors put on coats, hats, gloves, and scarves and do a
neighborhood exploration. While on a walk, they stop on the sidewalk to notice the cracks in the pavement. A
child observes, “Look at all those cracks.” Mama Amaya asks, “Why do you think they’re there?” Another child
 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CHILDHOOD EDUCATION 577

suggests, “Maybe because no one has come to fix it.” Another child says, “They should fix it. Somebody lives
here and we walk here and someone might fall and hurt their knees.” (personal observation, May, 2013)

By facilitating conversations such as these, teachers allow children to engage deeply in what it means
to question and interrogate issues within their community. They are given the opportunity to define
themselves as active members with the power to identify problems, reason, and find solutions.
Additionally, a great deal of time is spent at Sunshine appreciating the various ways that children
are beautiful. They are regularly complemented on the ways that their hair is braided and its various
textures, their smiles, and their skin color, and they are encouraged to show the same appreciation to
each other. In this way, they are given opportunities to exercise their capacity for care and love of
each other’s physical appearance in a world that often derides their physical attributes. In acknowl-
edging their own and each other’s beauty, the children at Sunshine are practicing global citizenship
education through the very intentional validation of physical cultural indicators.
When children engage in these practices at Sunshine, they are learning a uniquely different story
about themselves. Surrounded by teachers, immediate family, and peers who validate them through
these practices, children learn that living in a world that values their intellectual capacity as well as
their physical beauty is normal. The expectation, as stated by teachers and Mama Felicia, is that
when they encounter people and situations that imply otherwise, they are then capable of internally
recognizing that it is not their truth. In these ways, Sunshine is not merely providing a space to
protect young children against encounters with racism or “buffering” (Sheets, 1999, p. 31), it is quite
literally creating an entire environment where children can practice positive self-esteem development
with each other. In doing so, children become accustomed to a world where validation is common-
place and mutual and where problems are addressed through group collaboration and problem
solving. Equipped with these tools, children are then capable of going out into a wider world
prepared to do the work of global citizenship.

Theme 4. Teacher intentionality

Teachers who exhibit effective global citizenship education teaching are those who practice agency in
the development of curriculum, through powerful collaboration and community and family involve-
ment. Teacher agency is a tremendous force at Sunshine. Mama Felicia’s agency led her to make the
decision to keep her children out of schools that would ultimately damage them and motivated her
to create her own school. Mama Cari is free to create her own concepts of dance based on West and
South African culture. Mama Barbara takes multiple opportunities to teach unique styles of chil-
dren’s yoga in ways that are relevant and engaging. Mama Ayanna’s firm but attentive teaching style
keeps children alert and on task. Mama Amaya spends extra time tailoring the weekly curriculum to
the children’s individual developmental needs. The freedom that the teachers have in the classroom
contributes to a healthy work environment where teachers are motivated and respond to children in
ways that encourage their social and cultural development.
Collaboration with other schools is often used as a curriculum building strategy at Sunshine.
Creating curriculum that is global and age appropriate is a tightrope walk. As teachers work to teach
children that they are part of something as large and complex as a global community, they must still
do it in a way that is comprehensible for a 4-year-old. This becomes a group effort. Mama Amaya
notes that:
We teach the history of various continents through song and dance and textiles and food. All the different
mediums that they do their best learning through. It’s not done by taking a textbook out and saying, “This is
China, this is Mao.” No. (Sugg, 2013)

Sunshine does not exist in a bubble. With the neighborhood changing so rapidly, the teachers make
real efforts to keep the curriculum relevant. The school is committed to connecting to and
collaborating with other schools and resources as a way of learning and implementing as much
quality strategy as possible. As Mama Felicia states:
578 R. E. HANCOCK

I’ve been touring these schools just for my own information … [about] what happens in these schools, what do
they do, how … they push their programs. I want to design our program along these lines, not with the same
Eurocentric focus, but with that deep cognitive approach. (Barnor, 2013)

The concept of family is perhaps one of the best manifestations of teacher intentionality at Sunshine.
Immediate family are welcomed into the physical space of Sunshine at all times of day. The walls of
the school are decorated with images of children with their families. Parents are invited to coteach,
dads come weekly to cook lunch, and extended family are encouraged to volunteer as leaders for
neighborhood explorations. One morning, an uncle’s bakery was the exploration destination and the
topic of discussion among the children for weeks afterward. After a classroom visit by a father to
show children how to play djembe drums, the children adopted the drums and played them for the
remainder of the year. Having pieces of home present in the classroom in this way drives the concept
that the classroom is an extension of home—a space designed for the child to feel safe and
welcomed.
As mentioned earlier, teachers at Sunshine consciously create an environment in which the child
is enveloped in a series of concentric circles, within which they are the center. Immediate family
surrounds the child, and the school, in welcoming family, envelops child and family. Through
collaboration with the child’s surroundings, the school frames child, family, and school as held
within the immediate community of the neighborhood. Finally, by drawing constant connections
between the life of the child at Sunshine and the lives of children in other parts of the world, all is
experienced within the framework of a global community. In this way, Theme 4 addresses
my second research question by exhibiting how African American children are given a framework
for making sense of their place in the global community. They and their experiences are centralized
and highly valued.

Discussion
The curriculum at Sunshine can be categorized as Afrocentric, but also cosmopolitan in nature and
therefore transferable across cultures. Asante (1991) credits Carter G. Woodson with identifying the
fundamental problems encountered by African Americans in traditional classrooms, specifically
being “educated away from their own culture and attached to the fringes of European culture”
(p. 170). Asante identifies an education that is Afrocentric through Woodson’s lens thus: “If
education is ever to be substantive and meaningful within the context of American society, it
must first address the African’s historical experience, both in Africa and America” (p. 170). Using
this definition, the curriculum at Sunshine is truly Afrocentric in scope.
The concept of cosmopolitanism can be traced back to ancient Greece where, according to
Ribeiro (2001), a Cosmopolite was a citizen of the world. Embedded in this definition was the
understanding that someone who was cosmopolitan possessed “a positive attitude towards
difference, a desire to construct broad allegiances and equal and peaceful global communities
of citizens who should be able to communicate across cultural and social boundaries forming a
universalist solidarity” (p. 19). In this way, human beings belong to a single global community
and share a common sense of morality. At Sunshine, the emphasis drawing multifaceted con-
nections between the children in the Fouriors class and people across the diaspora with the
intention of instilling a sense of global community places the curriculum squarely within the
parameters of cosmopolitanism. This construction makes such a curriculum available not only to
communities of African American children in New York City, but also to classrooms of young
learners throughout the world.
As Afrocentric and Cosmopolitan, global citizenship education is a doubly powerful tool. On the
one hand, the curriculum effectively situates the lived experience and history of the child and their
community at the center of the curriculum, privileging it to counter the various forms of supremacy
the child may encounter in their lived experience. Simultaneously, the curriculum locates the child as
 JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN CHILDHOOD EDUCATION 579

a member of a large and multifaceted global community, teaching the child that they occupy a
position of honor and value and thereby encouraging them to move about unrestricted. In this way,
the child is emancipated from the barriers of assigned place imposed on them.
All of the examples provided in this article are indeed strategies that a caring, sensitive staff might
enact in any environment. When we look across the field of early childhood curricula, from Reggio
Emilia to Montessori to modified Anti-Bias, we see these strategies. The uniqueness of the curricu-
lum at Sunshine lies in the lens of anticolonial theory that it operates through. Here, global
citizenship education has the power to intentionally articulate that young children are emancipated
from a colonial system of education when they are given the tools to conceptualize themselves as
equal and valued members of a global community.

Conclusion
Anderson (1988) quoted William H. Baldwin in 1899 who, when speaking to Blacks living in the
southern United States, advised them to accept subjugation, saying, “Avoid social questions …
continue to be patient … know that it is a crime for any teacher, white or black, to educate the negro
for [that] which is not open to him” (p. 84). In this way, Ladson-Billings’ (2009) assertion that “the
official school curriculum is a culturally specific artifact designed to maintain a White supremacist
master script” (p. 18) is realized. Through a globally centered practice, Sunshine actively eliminates
the concept that certain places and spaces are off limits to the physical bodies, creative imaginations,
and aspirations of their children, thereby providing space for a new definition of “place,” free from
externally imposed racist and trans-historic colonialist practice.
The intention of this article is not to frame global citizenship education and multicultural
education as mutually exclusive. Rather, global citizenship education should be seen as a natural
progression, with multicultural education being one element of its firm foundation. It bears
remembering that multicultural education in the United States has its roots in the Civil Rights
movement and, specifically, the integration efforts of the 1950s through to the 1980s. In the 21st
century, though many elements of oppression have remained the same, children from marginalized
communities need time-tested tools used in new ways as they encounter the world. Tools such as
validation, agency, collaboration, and self-care are all means by which children can engage in the
world in ways that protect and reinforce their own self-identity while successfully developing strong
relationships across the barriers of difference they will inevitably encounter with others. This is
doing the work of global citizenship.
The anticolonial, emancipatory style of global citizenship education exhibited at Sunshine pre-
school and the particular benefits of teaching such a curriculum to African American children has
not been previously explored. In addition, the research contributes to the study of global education
by considering how a global citizenship education can benefit preschool-age children specifically.
This work asserts that global citizenship education can speak to the unique education needs and
identities of young African American children, a demographic completely absent from current
discussions on the topic of global citizenship. In this way, the research provides an intersection
between global education, early childhood education, and the education of African American
children that has not been previously explored.

References
Anderson, J. (1988). The education of blacks in the south, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Asante, M. (1991). The Afrocentric idea in education. Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 170–180. doi:10.2307/2295608
Banks, J. (2004). Teaching for social justice, diversity and citizenship in a global world. The Educational Forum, 68(4),
289–298. doi:10.1080/00131720408984645
Barnor, F. (2013, March 18). Personal interview.
Barnor, F. (2017). Philosophy. Retrieved from www.littlesunpeople.com
580 R. E. HANCOCK

Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Making human beings: Bioecological perspectives on human development. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Childs, P., & Williams, P. (1997). Introduction to postcolonial theory. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Dei, G., & Asgharzadeh, A. (2001). The power of social theory: The anti-colonial discursive framework. Journal of
Educational Thought (Jet)/Revue De La Pensée Éducative., 35(3), 297–323.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
National Association for Multicultural Education. (2017). Definitions of multicultural education. Retrieved from www.
nameorg.org
Ribeiro, G. (2001). What is cosmopolitanism? International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 4,
2842–2845.
Russell-Brown, K. (1997). The color of crime. Baltimore, MD: National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People.
Sheets, R. (1999). Race and ethnic identity in school practice: Aspects of human development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Sugg, A. (2013, April 2). Personal interview.